National Broadband Ireland (NBI), the company rolling out the new high-speed fibre broadband network under the Government’s National Broadband Plan (NBP), has extended the deadline for it ‘Imagine the Future’ competition by one month to the 25th of April due to a recent surge in schools that have signed up to take part. The new deadline has been put in place to enable recent entrants to have enough time to create their submissions.
NBI has received a significant number of entries since the competition was launched in January in the form of pictures, paintings, recordings and a variety of other art forms. Nearly 700 primary schools across in the Intervention Area of the NBP are eligible to take part. Principals can register and find out more about the ‘Imagine the Future’ competition, by visiting NBIschools.ie .
The ‘Imagine the Future’ competition aims to highlight and delve into how students perceive the principle of high-speed fibre broadband and the potential opportunities that arise from it.
Students are being asked to create a piece of art responding to the simple statement, ‘Imagine the Future’. Entries can take a variety of forms, including a sculpture, a photo, a painting, a song, a short movie or even a dance – making it as accessible as possible for students to participate.
Entries can focus on the following themes:
- Transportation of the future
- School of the future
- Home of the future
- Workplace of the future
- Hospital of the future
- Community of the future
Peter Hendrick, Chief Executive Officer of National Broadband Ireland, said: “NBI is delighted by the positive response we have received to the ‘Imagine the Future’ competition. We have taken great joy in seeing the variety of entries from schools across the country and have been extremely impressed by the imagination and creativity on display. We encourage any schools that feel it would be of benefit to their students to sign up online and take part. We hope that it will give young people the opportunity to imagine the endless possibilities and opportunities afforded to them through access to high-speed broadband.”
The competition will go through three phases: a school, county and national phase. Winners from each school will progress to the county phase, where a panel of judges selected by NBI will decide who will represent their county at the final national phase and be in with a chance to win an ActivPanel. As the connected hub of the modern classroom, the Promethean ActivPanel creates powerful digital learning experiences which are further enhanced through internet access.
Students participating in NBI’s new art, design and imagination competition have a chance to win a Promethean™ ActivPanel™ – a state of the art interactive flat panel display for their school, as well as a number of other individual student prizes for county and national competition winners.
Samantha Ecock, Territory Manager – Ireland, from global education technology company, Promethean, will be helping to judge the competition, with the winner due to be announced in June of this year.
National Broadband Ireland is actively working across the country to design and build the new high-speed, Fibre-to-the-Home network, which will connect over 1.1 million people and over 554,000 premises in the project’s Intervention Area.
